Aoi Bungaku 10/Run Melos! 2
I'm going to attempt to talk about this concluding episode without going overboard because (a) no-one wants to read that many words and (b)
Run Melos! is so short that anyone could sit down and watch it in under an hour.
Anyhoo, the final episode of this two-part story is as good, if not better than the proceeding episode. Nakamura and his team to a fantastic job of animating, pacing and writing this section. As I mentioned in my earlier review, Nakamura likes to have different scenes weaving between one another. This can be the past, the present, real events, fictional events, events that will never happen, whatever. A logical comparison would be the way events unfold in Satoshi Kon's
Millenium Actress, although Nakamura doesn't handle it in quite that way, it's an easy comparison to grasp if you haven't seen this show.
It's extremely entertaining and interesting direction, to say the least. We even get a a furious writing sequence equal to any from
Death Note. But it works here like it did there because the emotions and the (melo)drama is running dangerously high. Somehow, it still worked for me and I even felt a little emotional come the ending. It shouldn't work, but it does, because the directing is exceptional.
I would be remiss not to mention the exceptional production values. Truly, this two part story is gorgeous. The character designs are great, the background animation is gorgeous, important objects (the watch) look splendid and the character animation is impressive as well, with special attention being paid to hair, sweat, motion-blur and the movement of clothes.
My appreciation of this story has only increased on a rewatch and so I recommend it to all an sundry, especially as it's only two episodes. It does contain a healthy amount of melodrama, so you've been forewarned. In my books, that isn't necessarily a bad thing when it's handled this well. Plus, it's a shorter than his other show,
Mōryō no Hako.
